Horror movie giants at their best

The Body Snatcher (1945)
Starring: Boris Karloff, Henry Daniell, Russell Wade, Bela Lugosi, and Edith Atwater
Director: Robert Wise
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

In this loose adaptation of a Robert Louis Stevenson short story, a young medical student (Wade) becomes drawn into the twisted relationship between a brilliant but coldhearted surgeon (Daniell) and a strange coachman who moonlights as a body snatcher to provide the doctor with research specimens (Karloff).

"The Body Snatcher" is a one-stop spot to discover why producer Val Lewton, actor Boris Karloff and director Robert Wise are held in such high regard by horror movie fans and filmmakers.

Lewton's touch is all over this film, and there is barely a scene that doesn't feature terror technqiues that filmmakers copy and rely on to this very day. Karloff gives one of the very best performances of his career, oozing greasy charm and quiet menace with every word and gesture. And then there's the very chilling scene where he's just choked a man to death, is sitting over the corpse, and then reaches out to stroke his pet cat. And, finally, Wise mounts a brilliantly structured film where the mystery and tension keeps mounting until the end, and every scene is perfectly paced, framed and lit. Much gets said about film noir, but the use of light and shadow in black and white horror films like this one is far more important that in crime dramas, and here Wise uses the medium to perfection.

And, of course, the stars are backed up by an excellent supporting cast, including Bela Lugosi in his final horror role for a major studio. Lugosi's role is small, but he brings a level of raw creepiness to his character, creepiness born more of stupidity than the evil that wafts from Karloff's character.

In retrospect, the fact that Lugosi dies in a very key scene in the film is something of an allegory for his career, as well as Karloff's. In the scene in question, Lugosi ends up dead on the floor and Karloff reaches out to pet a cat in a very creepy moment. This was the second-to-last film Lugosi made for a major studio, and his career and life were mostly a downward spiral from here, while Karloff's career in horror films continued to flourish.

Getting ready for the change...

Ann Miller, who has helped us mark more holidays than anyone else here at Shades of Gray, stopped by to get things ready for the Coming of 2019.

'The Adventures of Tartu' are thrilling!

The Adventures of Tartu (1943)
Starring: Robert Donat, Valerie Hobson, Walter Rilla, Glynis Johns, Phyllis Morris, and Martin Miller
Director: Harold S. Bucquet
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

A British army officer and bomb expert (Donat), who happens to be a chemical engineer who is also fluent in German and Romanian, is recruited by military intelligence for a mission in German occupied Czechoslovakia. Here, is is to pose as Jan Tartu, a Romanian Nazi and chemist, infiltrate a plant where the Germans are making next-generation chemical weapons, and destroy it. Naturally, things go sideways with the mission, and while "Tartu" is improvising his way back on course, things go from urgent to dire: The Nazis aren't weeks or months away from launching a chemical weapons attack on Britain, but mere days!

"The Adventures of Tartu" is a tightly plotted and excellently executed spy thriller. There is literally not a moment of time wasted in the film, with every second spent deftly establishing characters and their relationships, or advancing and/or complicating the plot and the story. And what complications! I can't comment too much on them without spoiling them, but the way the predictable romance between leads Donat and Hobson intersects with the expected elements of a spy movie, as well as a couple of the plot complications, is wonderful and a great source of tension and suspense as the third act opens.

The already great script is brought to brilliant life by excellent, nuanced performances all around; even deeply vile characters like the lead Nazi in the film, played by William Rilla show glimpses of humanity. Every cast member is top-notch here.

Robert Donat is especially impressive since he essentially plays two different characters--Terence Stevensen of the British Army, an officer and a gentleman who loves his mother and visits her on weekends; and Jan Tartu of the Romanian Iron Guard who is a vain and self-centered womanizer. One could even say he plays a third character, since at two different points in the movie, he adopts a persona that's harder-edged than either Stevensen or Tartu, when he first has to show Nazi commanders and then resistance fighters that he "has what it takes" to be trusted by them. While I found Donat charming and lots of fun to watch in the only other film I recall seeing him in ("The 39 Steps", which happens to be another spy thriller), here I found him downright brilliant.

The final elements that makes this film a great joy to watch is the cinematography and the great sets, especially when it comes to the Nazi munitions plan and the secret weapons lab built inside a mountain. (And, boy, can those Movie Nazis build secret bases. Even James Bond villains can't match their ability to build massive and spacious underground labs!

"The Adventures of Tartu" is one of the 50 movies included in the "shovelware" set Fabulous Forties... and it's the original, superior British edit of the film. The American version is available for Streaming via Amazon Prime (and free for members); several scenes that are present just for character building are cut or shortened in the American version. I'm providing Amazon links to both below, but I want to stress that the one included in the Fabulous Forties collection is the superior film AND the digital transfer was made from a better print than the one available via Amazon Prime. (I've already posted reviews of other films included in the set. Click here to see them. and maybe decide if the set is worth your hard-earned dollars.)

While both versions of "The Adventures of Tartu" are worthwhile, and watching both is an interesting exercise, the Nine of Ten Stars rating at the top of this review is for the British version of the film; the American edit drops down to a Seven of Ten. It's still a good movie, but it's not as good.as the original cut.

A case where the 'monster' is the hero

Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)
Starring: Richard Carlson, Julie Adams, Antonio Moreno and Richard Denning
Director: Jack Arnold
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

A group of scientists travel into the Amazon jungle to retrieve an unusual fossil, but instead find themselves battling a very-much-alive amphibious humanoid.


I don't think I've ever seen a movie where I've been so quickly on the side of the monster, or rooted so strongly for it to kill off the cast of "heroes" as I did when I saw "Creature from the Black Lagoon".

I also don't think I've seen a movie that has irritated me quite so much as this one did.

If the morons we're supposed to be rooting for had behaved like scientists instead of big game hunters, they might have learned something about the creature, like, oh, that it was intelligent. From beginning to end, the assholes on the good riverboat Rita caused their own troubles, and they are completely unsympathetic as a result. The only member of the expedition with a brain was Richard Carlson's character, and even he seemed awfully slow on the uptake. (When the monster starts laying traps and blocking the river out of the lagoon, it's time to stop treating it like it's a shark with arms and legs, doofus.)

Despite my annoyance with every single character in the film, except the monster, whose initial mistake was one of curiosity and who later is justifiably pissed off at these interlopers who keep shooting sharp sticks and shining blinding lights at him (her?), I was very impressed with the astonishing quality of the underwater action photography and the amazing design of the creature. (And I'm even more amazed at the way the outfit allowed the stuntman wearing it to swim and seem more convincingly real than just about any other "guy in a rubber suit" monsters that have graced the silver screen.)

Unfortunately, the film has a padded feel to it, as there are several drawn-out pointless conversations, and a number of scenes that go on well past the point they should have ended. The film also suffers from a general lack of suspense, although perhaps if I hadn't been wishing for the monster to kill those idiots, maybe I would have felt a little more tension than I did.

Still, the look of the creature is fantastic, and the underwater sequences are amazingly well done. In fact, every shot of the creature swimming or fighting is a joy to watch, and the film is at its very best during a long sequence where the looks-great-in-a-bathing-suit marine biologist goes for a swim in the lagoon, and the creature is pacing her under the water, watching her with no menace but obvious curiosity.

The flaws and the strong parts of the film almost balance each other out, but the end result is a movie that's not quite as good as I expected. Maybe I had my expectations set to high, maybe it's a film that doesn't mesh well with modern attitudes--or maybe it just doesn't mesh well with my attitude.

This movie so annoyed me so much that it's the only one of the classic Universal Monsters where I haven't seen all of the original films. I'm getting around to changing that since I was gifted with a copy of the Creature of the Black Lagoon Legacy Collection. Time will tell if I keep rooting for the monster, or if the "heroes" are being bigger assholes in the rest of the series.

Picture Perfect Wednesday: Thelma Todd

I was recently going through my pile of "To Be Watched & Reviewed" DVDs, and I noticed that the majority of them feature Thelma Todd. I didn't plan it this way, but appears that 2019 will be the Year of the Hot Toddy. (I'll add a "Thelma Todd Quarterly" to the line-up--with her joining Bessie Love and Milla Jovovich in rotation--to make it even more so!)

In addition to regular appearances by Thelma Todd, I am hoping and planning for 2019 to bring many more reviews of movies and comics, as well as a healthy dose of photos and art and the occasional music video and randomness.

I hope you all will join me on the other side!

'It's a Cinch' is amusing but unremarkable... except for a really bizarre directorial choice

It's a Cinch (1932)
Starring: Monte Collins, Phyllis Crane, Tom O'Brien, and Richard Powell
Director: William B. Goodrich (aka Roscoe Arbuckle)
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

When a dance instructor (Collins) is tricked into facing a prize fighter (O'Brien) in the boxing ring, his girlfriend (Crane) devises a plan to turn the odds in his favor.

"It's a Cinch" is a mildly amusing short film with a fast-moving story performed by a pleasant but  unremarkable cast. They are, sadly, made even more unremarkable by the degraded state of the of the film the DVD transfer was made from. The sound quality is okay, but the picture is so washed out and blurry that I couldn't even capture a good image with which to illustrate this review. (Hence, the use of a head shot of actress Phyllis Crane.)

"It's a Cinch" is perhaps of greatest interest to modern viewers because it is the last film directed by Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle. In 1921, he had been accused of rape by a woman who died before an investigation of her charges could even be properly begun, the prosecutor decided to link the two events and Arbuckle was tried for murder.

Although he was ultimately and emphatically found not guilty by a jury (so emphatically, in fact, that the jury felt obligated to issue a letter of apology to him with their verdict), Arbuckle's career was in ruins, because he had already been tried and convicted in the media. He could no longer get work as an actor, but he turned to directing under the pseudonym William B. Good. By the time work wrapped on "It's a Cinch", however, the murder trial was far enough in the past that Arbuckle's acting career began to revive and he stepped back in front of the camera.

Why am I rattling on about Roscoe Arbuckle? Because the only gripe I have about this picture leaves me wondering about the choices he made as a director.

"It's a Cinch" opens with a scene at the dance academy where the main character is an instructor that consists mostly of lingering shots of the dancers' chests and legs. Now, I don't usually have issues with cheesecake (as there is plenty of evidence for here and here), but those shots made me feel awkward, almost embarrassed, to be watching. What's more, these shots were completely out of tone with everything else that followed in the picture. In the final analysis, that opening scene almost made me knock the film down to a Four Out of Ten Star rating, but since the film was fun enough otherwise I held it to a low average rating. (I just wish I could figure out why someone thought that opening scene was a good idea... especially from a director who'd been accused of rape and who's pseudonym was Will B. Good. And my initial reaction wasn't even colored by that; it wasn't until I was starting this review that it registered who had directed the film.)

"It's a Cinch" is one of six short comedies included in the "Ultra-Rare Pre-Code Comedies Vol. 4" collection. The degraded quality of the original from which it was transferred is about the same as the others in the set--most have decent sound but awful picture--but this is a case where you get what you pay for. (Near as I can tell, this disc is also the first time these films have been available to the public for a long time.)

Christmas is here!

Santa is making his rounds, but in case something goes wrong, we've arranged for back-up! Standing by are...

... Shirley Knight ...

... Vera Ellen ...

... Joan Crawford ...

... and Mary Carlisle!

Um... Mary seems to have left a few necessities behind at the North Pole staging area. Whoops.

Merry Christmas!

I hope all those who have visited 'Shades of Gray' for the reviews, pictures, and music videos over the past ten years are enjoying the company of friends, family, and other people who care about them. Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you'll be back in the future!